How I Made Faux Delft Tiles

Before I even tell you how I made faux Delft tiles, I’ll tell you why…

Check out the YouTube video where I make a practice board of tiles for ‘How I Made Faux Delft Tiles’.

If you’ve been following along in my blog you already know about the antique corner cupboard we have in the breakfast room of our 100 year old house:

At Christmas, I showed you how I made this super easy DIY Alpine Garland to cover the cords from the Christmas village I put in the corner cupboard:

But alas, Christmas is over and it’s a lot of work setting up that village scene, so instead of packing it all up… I decided to cheat and leave it all in the corner cupboard.

I just removed the alpine garland from the front, to use next year, tucked the cords back in the cupboard, remounted the door and it was all was good…

Well, actually, not so much.

First the color of the cupboard has been bugging me for a while… There’s just too much warm tones in that room. Several pieces of wood furniture along with the wide plank laminate floor that is a warm wood tone too.

AND…

The biggest issue of all is that the village, frozen in it’s winter state was visible through the large front glass door as well as the windows on each side of the corner cupboard:

Well, that wasn’t going to work. I started to brain storm. I considered both fabric and paper to line the insides of the glass with during the months the view of the winter village scene wouldn’t be welcome.

I also took key inspiration from the antique cook stove I re-did for the kitchen:

I love the blue and white tile surrounded by the black frame.

So that was it, I’d paint the antique cupboard black and find some wallpaper or wrapping paper that was faux delft tile. Easier said than done. Oh painting the cupboard was easy enough…

But I couldn’t find a paper version of delft tile that I liked, so I decided I could make them. That’s the ‘why’, here’s the how I made faux delft tiles:

I created a new Pinterest board and started a new board saving all the delft tile designs I liked to use for inspiration when I went to create my own.

Then I went shopping for the few ingredients for my project:

I used two different types of markers, but preferred the nicer ones. HERE are blue colors (and HERE are grey colors. These markers are amazing and so fun to use on this foam core board. I tested different blues and decided the indigo blue was closest to the other delft blue items I have. The large brush like tip totally lends itself to make the art look just like brush strokes on a delft tile.

The foam core board is available online in a couple of different sizes, large sheets 10 pack or small sheets foam core in a 4 pack.

Some other tools I needed were an X-Acto knife, a ruler and pencil and a worn out grey marker.

With all my ingredients, I started to sketch out some designs and see what I could successfully make:

For the large door I cut the foam core board to fit, then divided up the ’tiles’ on it, using one of the grandkid’s worn out grey marker to draw the dividing lines, representing a grout look.

Most of the delft tile I liked have little designs in the corners. I decided on a pattern I liked and drew all those on before I started drawing the main pictures on the tiles. I drew it all free hand directly with the marker. I just felt that delft tiles look very organic like that, with the designs made of free-flowing blue glaze. I was concerned that if I used a pencil first, it’d start to look too precise and thus lose it’s flowing look that I love with that kind of pottery.

That’s why I did lots of practice tiles on the scraps beforehand. I needed to get my hand comfortable with how the brush marker flowed and be able to visualize the designs I was trying to ‘paint’. (you can see how the markers work like paint brushes in the video practice board here)

On the side windows of the corner cupboard, I decided to make 1 individual tile for each pane of glass. Below you can see how I held the kid’s grey marker on the side and quickly brushed it along the edges creating a bit of depth to the tiles:

Here you can see the with and without grey edge:

It’s very subtle and mostly unnoticeable, but I do think it makes a little bit of a difference.

The foam core works perfectly for this application. I could cut the pieces to be a snug fit inside each pane of glass and just friction holds the lightweight yet sturdy foam core in place.

Here is a close up of the front door now:

Inside, the village scene is still frozen in it’s winter scenes, but out of site, out of mind, until next Christmas and I reverse the look.

But for now and the next several months, I have this fun interpretation of my version of a delft tiled cupboard:

I’m actually really pleased with the finished look, I like this corner cupboard more now than I ever have. That’s how it is sometimes, you have a problem that arises, but the resolve winds up better than even before the problem. I was never thrilled with how this corner cupboard looked. The glassware in it always looked kinda busy and lost inside it. So once I decided to remove all that and install the village scene, this resolve of the delft tile is my favorite so far!

Here’s the video of me making the practice board: (I tried using the head camera holster… not great! )

Video Making the Sample Board for ‘How I Made Faux Delft Tiles’ 

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